faffi

A totally different take on weighing the pegs

The brain is not typically wired to be bothered with words like "don't" and for most will only react to "fixate". If your kid has ice cream running down the chin and you tell the kid "do not look down", the child will definitely look down. If you instead say "look up", you can wipe the chin before the kid ruin the shirt.

That helped a lot for an old and slow man 👌

I enjoyed the read. Not sure it really made me any wiser, but it was a good read nonetheless - you are good with words 👍

I can not speak from much personal experience, although I have slid both tires - separately or in tandem - on public asphalt roads involuntarily quite often so there is no doubt you can slide also when grip is good, I have read interviews with several world class riders describing road racing as riding on marbles. In other words, if you are not sliding, you are not going fast enough. Not to win, at least. Sliding is used to steer, but also grip is at its highest with some partial sliding/spinning, even if it probably do not feel like it. This has been going on for ages. Back in the mid-70s one of the faster road racers in USA (forgot who) asked DuHamel (IIRC) how he could so fast around a particular corner. DuHamel said that he would slide the front for about 150 feet, then open the throttle to save the front from tucking and to complete the corner, before asking "Is there another way?". Freddie Spencer would also slide the front all the time and saving the imminent crash in the same manner when he came onto the scene. Roberts Sr preferred to steer with the rear and let the front end stay planted, but after Spencer it became almost mandatory to slide also the front to be competitive. These days, as I understand it, every rider going fast slide both ends virtually every corner. Some bikes and/or tires are easier to slide than others. Bikes that load up heavily, be that chassis or suspension, can recoil violently if grip is lost and regained. Tires with a very narrow band between grip and slide are also very difficult to control because you go rapidly from full grip to uncontrollable slide. Generally speaking, the more grip you have, the narrower band a tire will offer. This is also why most can slide at least a little on gravel with control, but far fewer can do so on tarmac. Now I'll let someone who actually know what they are talking about chime in, and either elaborate on or debunk my points 😉

It seems like the majority of the best road racers in the world ride quite a bit on gravel, be that flat track and/or MX. So I wonder if some of you also practice sliding bikes under low grip situations in order to improve their asphalt track riding?

I know nothing about this topic, basically. However, when I attended a gravel rally, I was told to keep weight on the outside peg and push firmly against the fuel tank with my outside knee while turning standing up. For me, that helped massively. Suddenly, it was easy to steer with the rear using the throttle, and slides could be controlled. I immediately felt safe. Whether this mean anything for road racing I cannot say. I have also read many times over the years that top rank riders can shift their weight between the inner and outer peg up to 20 times in a single corner. Apparently, they do this to control drift and grip. Way beyond my scope to try - I'd likely crash right away because my limited mental capacity would be spend on dancing on the pegs rather than controlling the bike and reading the road. Finally, riders like Tony Elias and other shorties commonly let their outside foot dangle above the peg while cornering, a result of hanging way off and having short legs, I presume. They still win races. So perhaps this is just another tool available to be used by the rider, but not mandatory for success?

Rutter is a multiple winner of IoM, so should be comparable. Sure, it was not set on the same day by the same rider, and as such not a perfect comparison, but it should give a fairly realistic picture.

For comparison, the premier class has seen less performance gains than the fastest class at Isle of Man (current lap record is set with an average speed of more than 135 mph) - in 1990, Gardner lapped Phillip Island at 1:34.560 during the race. Current race lap record is 1:28.108, set by Marc Marquez in 2013. If I take that equation, starting with 115 mph as an arbitrary average speed of Garner, I end up with 120.8 mph for Marquez. Interestingly, the best race lap in 2019 by Vinales took 1:29.322, or 119.7 mph using the same math. This is a rather flowing track where handling is more important than power, though, whereas IoM benefit quite a lot from more power. Report to moderator 188.126.196.22

In 2018, Micheal Rutter punted a stock Panigale 1100 V4 Speciale the around IoM TT course in about 18:40 for an average speed about 121 mph. I say roughly because it is impossible to time the lap correctly since it is not a typical get-away, nor lap completion. But it is close enough. It's on YouTube in two parts, part 1 being here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYaSG_IoAXk For a stock bike, that seems pretty impressive. However, Steve Hislop set a 18:39.4 lap on an RC30, or the Honda VFR750R as it was also known, back in 1989. So what do you think? Is it impressive that 30 years later, an 1100cc stock machine on road tyres can match a 750cc modified street bike on slicks from the 80s, or would you have expected more from the development? As a comparison, the New Era 750 record around Phillip Island was set by Scott Campbell on a Honda RC30 in 2016 with a time of 1:40.719. The production Superbike lap record was set by Wayne Maxwell in 2018 in a Yamaha R1 with a time of 1:32.224.

This is a 240 kg / 530 lb touring bike with 56hp keeping a rapid pace among faster machines around a race track. I see that he brakes later and harder and also manage to get on the throttle earlier, but it is hard for me to tell how he manage to do this so much better than the others.

I suppose the rate of turn-in as well as the amount of lean will matter greatly, as would speed itself through wind resistance?

Even car racing can be raw

For comparison

This is exciting. On board MotoGP is a display of talent and virtually perfection, but this is brutality at its finest. If circuit racing is sculpture with a carving knife, real road racing is art making with a chain saw. Enjoy!

Congrats on your new bike! Can you disengage regen so that the bike is free-rolling when you close the throttle? I know electric cars can be det up for no, some and full regen, and the affect on engine braking is massive. Also,, as it is likely RBW, you can probably reprogram the throttle for a more linear operation.

So you think that his saves is helped a lot by him managing to stay relaxed on the bars despite using great lower body effort to support the bike - did I understand that correctly? If so, a very interesting observation!

In your opinion, what is it that set him so far ahead of the competition? It has probably never been harder to be clearly the best that now, considering the quality of the machinery and the CV of the competitors, yet MM is demonstrably faster more often than not.

Hotfoot's advice about working the section backwards is so logical once brought to attention, and hence genius 👍👌

Interesting topic. Three things that came to mind while reading through the posts: 1. Many moons ago, Roberts sr had trouble going fast enough around Suzuka. Instead of continue circulating, he went back to the hotel and had a think. A few hours later he returned to the track and said he had found 2 seconds. Hei proved it by going 2 seconds faster. 2. Darren Binder, Moto3, says he has no braking points, he brakes when those around him does. He's fast, but cause a lot of havoc and crash frequently. 3. Rossi, and others, often try a fully new and untested setup before races when they haven't found a competitive setup during practice. At least in the case of Rossi, it seems to pay off more often than not.